Access to the Transplant Waiting List: All-too-Familiar Inequities Even Among Younger and Healthier Candidates
Research over the last several decades has described disparities in access to kidney transplantation by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and geographic region, revealing substantial inequities across all steps in the transplant process. For example, dialysis patients with lower (vs higher) SES have lower rates of referral, and while Black (vs non-Hispanic White) patients in the southeastern United States have higher rates of referral for transplant evaluation, they have lower rates of initiating the medical evaluation,1 are less likely to be waitlisted2 or to receive a living-donor transplant,3,4 and have poorer outcomes post-transplant.